In this article

How to identify the type of hold placed on an Exchange Online mailbox

6/22/2018

11 minutes to read

Contributors

In this article

This article explains how to identify holds placed on Exchange Online mailboxes in Office 365.

Office 365 offers a number of ways that your organization can prevent mailbox content from being permanently deleted. This allows your organization to retain content to meet compliance regulars or for the duration of legal or other types of investigations. Here's a list of the retention features (also called holds) in Office 365:

Litigation Hold - Holds that are applied to user mailboxes in Exchange Online.

eDiscovery hold - Holds that are associated with an eDiscovery case in the Security & Compliance Center. eDiscovery holds can be applied to user mailboxes, and on the corresponding mailbox for Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams.

In-Place Hold - Holds that are applied to user mailboxes by using the In-Place eDiscovery & Hold tool in the Exchange admin center in Exchange Online.

Office 365 retention policy - Retains content in user mailboxes in Exchange Online and in the corresponding mailbox for Office 365 Groups and Microsoft Teams. You can create a retention policy retains Skype for Business Conversations, which are stored in user mailboxes.

There are two types of Office 365 retention policies that can be assigned to mailboxes.

Specific location retention policies - These are policies that are assigned to the content locations of specific users. You use the Get-Mailbox cmdlet in Exchange Online PowerShell to get information about retention policies assigned to specific mailboxes.

Organization-wide retention policies - These are policies that are assigned to all content locations in your organization. You use the Get-OrganizationConfig cmdlet in Exchange Online PowerShell to get information about organization-wide retention policies.
For more information, see the "Applying a retention policy to an entire organization or specific locations" section in Overview of Office 365 retention policies.

Office 365 retention labels - If a user applies an Office 365 retention label (one that's configured to retain content or retain and then delete content) to any folder or item in their mailbox, a hold is placed on the mailbox just as if the mailbox was placed on Litigation Hold or assigned to an Office 365 retention policy. For more information, see the Identifying mailboxes on hold because a retention label has been applied to a folder or item section in this article.

To manage mailboxes on hold, you may have to identify the type of hold that's placed on a mailbox so that you can perform tasks such as changing the hold duration, temporarily or permanently removing the hold, or excluding a mailbox from a Office 365 retention policy. In these cases, the first step is to identify the type of hold placed on the mailbox. And because multiple holds (and different types of holds) can be placed on a single mailbox, you'll have to identify all holds placed on a mailbox if you want to remove or change those holds.

Step 1: Obtaining the GUID for holds placed on a mailbox

You can run the following two cmdlets in Exchange Online PowerShell to get the GUID of the holds that are placed on a mailbox. After you obtain a GUID, you use it to identify the specific hold in Step 2. Note that Litigation Holds are not identified by a GUID. Litigation Holds are either enabled or disabled for a mailbox.

Get-Mailbox - Use this cmdlet to determine whether Litigation Hold is enabled for a mailbox and to get the GUIDs for eDiscovery holds, In-Place Holds, and Office 365 retention policies that are specifically assigned to a mailbox. The output of this cmdlet will also indicate if a mailbox has been explicitly excluded from an organization-wide retention policy.

Get-OrganizationConfig - Use this cmdlet to get the GUIDs for organization-wide retention policies.

Get-Mailbox

Run the following command to get information about the holds and Office 365 retention policies applied to a mailbox.

Get-Mailbox <username> | FL LitigationHoldEnabled,InPlaceHolds

Tip

If there are too many values in the InPlaceHolds property and not all of them are displayed, you can run the Get-Mailbox <username> | Select-Object -ExpandProperty InPlaceHolds command to display each GUID on a separate line.

The following table describes how to identify different types of holds based on the values in the InPlaceHolds property when you run the Get-Mailbox cmdlet.

Hold type

Example value

How to identify the hold

Litigation Hold

True

Litigation Hold is enabled for a mailbox if the LitigationHoldEnabled property is set to True.

eDiscovery hold

UniH7d895d48-7e23-4a8d-8346-533c3beac15d

The InPlaceHolds property contains the GUID of any hold associated with an eDiscovery case in the Security & Compliance Center. You can tell this is an eDiscovery hold because the GUID starts with the UniH prefix (which denotes a Unified Hold).

In-Place Hold

c0ba3ce811b6432a8751430937152491 or cld9c0a984ca74b457fbe4504bf7d3e00de

The InPlaceHolds property contains the GUID of the In-Place Hold that's placed on the mailbox. You can tell this is an In-Place Hold because the GUID either doesn't start with a prefix or it starts with the cld prefix.

Office 365 retention policy specifically applied to the mailbox

mbxcdbbb86ce60342489bff371876e7f224:1 or skp127d7cf1076947929bf136b7a2a8c36f:3

The InPlaceHolds property contains GUIDs of any specific location retention policy that's applied to the mailbox. You can identify retention policies because the GUID starts with the mbx or the skp prefix. The skp prefix indicates that the retention policy is applied to Skype for Business conversations in the user's mailbox.

Excluded from an organization-wide Office 365 retention policy

-mbxe9b52bf7ab3b46a286308ecb29624696

If a mailbox is excluded from an organization-wide Office 365 retention policy, the GUID for the retention policy the mailbox is excluded from is displayed in the InPlaceHolds property and is identified by the -mbx prefix.

Get-OrganizationConfig

If the InPlaceHolds property is empty when you run the Get-Mailbox cmdlet, there still may be one or more organization-wide Office 365 retention policies applied to the mailbox. Run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell to get a list of GUIDs for organization-wide Office 365 retention policies.

Get-OrganizationConfig | FL InPlaceHolds

Tip

If there are too many values in the InPlaceHolds property and not all of them are displayed, you can run the Get-OrganizationConfig | Select-Object -ExpandProperty InPlaceHolds command to display each GUID on a separate line.

The following table describes the different types of organization-wide holds and how to identify each type based on the GUIDs contained in InPlaceHolds property when you run the Get-OrganizationConfig cmdlet.

Organization-wide retention policies applied to Exchange mailboxes, Exchange public folders, and 1xN chats in Microsoft Teams are identified by GUIDs that start with the mbx prefix. Note that 1xN chats are stored in the mailbox of the individual chat participants.

Organization-wide retention policies applied to Office 365 groups and channel messages in Microsoft Teams are identified by GUIDs that start with the grp prefix. Note that channel messages are stored in the group mailbox that is associated with a Microsoft Team.

Understanding the format of the InPlaceHolds value for retention policies

In addition to the prefix (mbx, skp, or grp) that identifies an item in the InPlaceHolds property as an Office 365 retention policy, the value also contains a suffix that identifies the type of retention action that's configured for the policy. For example, the action suffix is highlighted in bold type in the following examples:

Step 2: Using the GUID to identify the hold

After you obtain the GUID for a hold that is applied to a mailbox, the next step is to use that GUID to identify the hold. The following sections show how to identify the name of the hold (and other information) by using the hold GUID.

eDiscovery holds

Run the following commands in Security & Compliance Center PowerShell to identify an eDiscovery hold that's applied to the mailbox. Use the GUID (not including the UniH prefix) for the eDiscovery hold that you identified in Step 1. The first command creates a variable that contains information about the hold; this variable is used in the other commands. The second command displays the name of the eDiscovery case the hold is associated with. The third command displays the name of the hold and a list of the mailboxes the hold applies to.

In-Place Holds

Run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell to identify the In-Place Hold that's applied to the mailbox. Use the GUID for the In-Place Hold that you identified in Step 1. The command displays the name of the hold and a list of the mailboxes the hold applies to.

Note that if the GUID for the In-Place Hold starts with the cld prefix, be sure to include the prefix when running the previous command.

Office 365 retention policies

Run the following command in Security & Compliance Center PowerShell to identity the Office 365 retention policy (organization-wide or specific location) that's applied to the mailbox. Use the GUID (not including the mbx, skp, or grp prefix or the action suffix) that you identified in Step 1.

Identifying mailboxes on hold because a retention label has been applied to a folder or item

Whenever a user applies a retention label that's configured to retain content or retain and then delete content to any folder or item in their mailbox, the ComplianceTagHoldApplied mailbox property is set to True. When this happens, the mailbox is considered to be on hold, just as if it was placed on Litigation Hold or assigned to an Office 365 retention policy. When the ComplianceTagHoldApplied property is set to True, the following things may occur:

If the mailbox or the user's Office 365 user account is deleted, the mailbox becomes an inactive mailbox.

You won't be able to disable the mailbox (either the primary mailbox or the archive mailbox, if it's enabled).

Items in the mailbox may be retained longer than expected. This is because the mailbox is on hold and therefore no items will be permanently deleted (purged).

To view the value of the ComplianceTagHoldApplied property, run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell:

Managing mailboxes on delay hold

After any type of hold is removed from a mailbox, the value of the DelayHoldApplied mailbox property is set to True. This occurs the next time the Managed Folder Assistant processes the mailbox and detects that a hold has been removed. This is called a delay hold and means that the actual removal of the hold is delayed for 30 days to prevent data from being permanently deleted (purged) from the mailbox. This gives admins an opportunity to search for or recover mailbox items that will be purged after the hold is actually removed. When a delay hold is placed on the mailbox, the mailbox is still considered to be on hold for an unlimited duration, as if the mailbox was on Litigation Hold. After 30 days, the delay hold expires, and Office 365 will automatically attempt to remove the delay hold (by setting the DelayHoldApplied property to False) so that the hold will be actually removed. After the DelayHoldApplied property to False, items that are marked for removal will be purged the next time the mailbox is processed by the Managed Folder Assistant.

To view the value for the DelayHoldApplied property for a mailbox, run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell.

Get-Mailbox <username> | FL DelayHoldApplied

To remove the delay hold before it expires, you can run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell:

Set-Mailbox <username> -RemoveDelayHoldApplied

Note that you must be assigned the Legal Hold role in Exchange Online to use the RemoveDelayHoldApplied parameter

To remove the delay hold on an inactive mailbox, run the following command in Exchange Online PowerShell:

The best way to specify an inactive mailbox in the previous command is to use its Distinguished Name or Exchange GUID value. Using one of these values helps prevent accidentally specifying the wrong mailbox.

Next steps

After you identify the holds that are applied to a mailbox, you can perform tasks such as changing the duration of the hold, temporarily or permanently removing the hold, or in the case of Office 365 retention policies, excluding an inactive mailbox from the policy. For more information about performing tasks related to holds, see the one of the following topics: